


I wanna go home and I ain't got –

by bookhobbit



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 04:52:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2800241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookhobbit/pseuds/bookhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rincewind after the incident with the Octavo. What do you do when the only thing you've ever wanted to be is now completely out of reach?</p>
            </blockquote>





	I wanna go home and I ain't got –

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this and put it on tumblr a little over a week ago while in one of those sad strange moods where you want your favorite character to work through their angst in order to work through yours. Was on the fence about whether to rework it or post it here. Decided to edit it a bit and put it here.

 It's exactly 1:39am, Ankh-Morpork time, just barely Octeday, Ember the 8th when Rincewind realizes he's never going to belong anywhere ever again.

His thoughts previous to this revelation have been mostly _how_ _could they do this to me?_ followed by _I wish I had the money to get drunk_ followed by _I can't believe they did this to me!_ followed by _why don't I have the money to get drunk_ all chasing each other around in a circle, but it strikes him out of the blue that he doesn't know where he's going to go next.

Anger and indignation and sheer wounded-animal hurt had kept him going for nearly three hours but the realization throws a wrench into his thought loop. It all catches up to him right in that moment and he is suddenly, achingly tired. There's nothing he wants to do more than sleep, except he has nowhere to go.

His granddad has been dead and his house sold for years and years now and Rincewind's sort of glad he's not alive to see this. All those stories about magic, all those years saying he was going to be a wizard, just see if he wasn't, all that studying up on the history and the requirements, and the old man hadn't even lived to see him enter the university, much less be expelled from it. That's probably just as well. Rincewind probably disappointed him enough as it is.

He's too old by far to go back to Small Gods Orphanage, which is the only other place he can ever remember living. He doesn't have any friends he can stay with, at least none outside the university and probably not any inside, come to think of it. What resources does he have in this city? He'd burned all his bridges getting into UU on the usually-safe assumption that the university would provide. Now it hasn't, and he's lost in his own hometown, on the streets he grew up in. What does he have left?

And that's when it hits him.

He's not a wizard anymore.

It's like being smacked upside the head with a board, combined shock and pain and disorientation. What has he ever wanted to be except a wizard? What else has he ever aspired to? He doesn't even have any talents, except that he's good at languages, which is hardly career-making these days. He's too old for an apprenticeship and not skilled enough to make his way in a trade without one.

It comes through clearly, then: _I'm never going to belong anywhere ever again_. He'll always be some sort of misfit; if he's lucky one of those magicians or thaumaturgists who did work for wizards but weren't wizards themselves. Too sad to make it, too desperate to cut their losses and do something else.

If he's unlucky, which it seems like he always is, they'll blacklisted him and he'll never work for a magic-user again. Well, they will, won't they? Nobody wants a magical lab worker with one of the eight most powerful spells in existing sitting in their head. Probably a risk, or something. Definitely embarrassing.

The spell has been giving him trouble, too. It feels like there's a physical weight in the space behind his eyes, pulling his head down. It's quiet now, but before, when there's been all the yelling, it'd kept trying to get itself said. At least the terrible sensation of fighting your vocal chords for control had distracted him from the rather more terrible sensation of an entire life's worth of ambitions being washed down the river like so much refuse.

It comes around again, swinging like a pendulum; _I am never going to belong anywhere ever again_. He's never going to be a piece of something bigger than himself. He's never going to fit into his own dreams.

He thinks, very briefly, _I want to die._

And then he thinks: _No. I don't._

Right now it feels like the most profound thought he's ever had. He doesn't want to die. He _doesn't want to die._ He may be out on the street with no job and no place to stay and nothing to his name but sixpence and the clothes on his back, but he doesn't want to die.

Sixpence, the clothes on his back, and one more thing...

They'd given it to him as some kind of sop, he supposes, a way of getting him out quicker with less fuss. Maybe they thought he'd sell it, but he's not going to do that. Because what this pendant means is that he's still a wizard. They gave this to him and can't take it away from him, for all they can make sure he never works in magical circles again.

Rincewind clutches the bronze octagon hanging on the chain, and knows he's not going to die tonight.

There are stables down towards Morpork, and one of them will have at least one unoccupied hay loft. Tomorrow he'll go down to the docks, where his one talent will be useful. There's always someone there who needs a bit of translation done, and maybe they'll him pay enough for some food, and then, well, then he'll see what happens next.

That's what surviving is all about. Seeing what happens next. Maybe it's a stopgap but what is life but a series of increasingly elaborate stopgaps?

The octagon has pressed lines into his palm now and he still doesn't let go, because he doesn't want to forget.

He says it to himself, _Rincewind the Wizard_ , like a charm that'll come true if he believes hard enough, like there's any magic in the world that can make that happen, and then he goes to find someplace to crash.  

If there's no place that'll have him, maybe he'll carve one out for himself.

He's still clutching the pendant when he falls asleep.

 


End file.
